Embrace The Mystery

During this Christmas season we become so excited about all the special parties, movies, songs, church services, and general celebration. We love hearing the Nativity story over and over again. At this point we might be able to repeat the story verbatim. I encourage you to take a moment and reflect on the ludicrousness of the story. Try to hear the story as if you had never heard it before. When we look at the story in this way we can see how God pulled out all the stops when orchestrating this world changing event. I imagine God truly reveled in creating one of the greatest paradoxes ever known. A virgin became pregnant… Crazy and strange things happen everyday in our world, but this takes a special prize. This paradox is particularly astounding when we think about the way virginity has been prized so highly over the millennium. God took one of the most established and valued “systems” this world knows and broke it. When Mary conceived through the Spirit, God was communicating that He was breaking all the rules we thought we knew. God wanted us to know He was doing something that bore a significance far beyond the world that humans have worked so hard to rationalize, organize, and put into a box of understanding. Today we have the gift of the Gospel and the teachings of saints past and present to help us understand what God was doing that day when Christ was born. But, we still need to realize there is so much more to the story then we will ever understand until we meet our Father face to face. Even Christ said to His disciples, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you” (Mark 4:11), but only 29 verses later He asked them “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40). Even though Christ was revealing the things of the Kingdom to His disciples there was so much they still did not understand. If they truly understood the whole truth of Christ they would not have feared. Just like the disciples we have been given great understanding, but we still can’t wrap our head all the way around the “length and width and height and depth,” (Ephesians 3:18) of the Gospel. In summary, do not let your familiarity of the story take away the wonder and awe that the story should provoke in your heart. Do not let what you think you know hinder what new thing the Spirit might be trying to teach you. Do not let all your experience prevent you from looking on this season with the eyes of a child. I pray that you are filled with wonder, astonishment, awe, joy, peace, and most importantly love. Be filled with love because God broke the “rules” to show us how much He loves us. Jacob Bancroft Director Of Youth Ministries